FWIW, it’s not at all clear to me, before really thinking about, what the difference is between “holding oneself to a standard” and “holding someone else to a standard”. Here’s what happens when I try to guess at what the differences might be.
1) Maybe it has something to do with the points at which intervention is feasible. When holding yourself to a standard, you can intervene in your own mind before taking action, and you can also attempt to course-correct in the middle of acting. When holding someone else to a standard, you can only intervene after you have observed the action.
2) Like 1, except since you can also intervene after observing the action when holding yourself to a standard as well, “holding yourself to a standard” is an umbrella covering a wider range of thingies than “holding someone else to a standard”, but some of the thingies it covers are the same.
3) Perhaps the difference is a matter of degree, for some reason? Like perhaps there is something about holding other people to standards that makes the highest standard you can reasonably hold someone to much lower than the highest standard you can reasonably hold yourself to, or (less plausibly?) vise versa.
Of these, 2 certainly seems the closest to matching my observations of the world in general; but it does not help me make sense of Duncan’s words as much as 1 does.
There’s also a huge distinction between the set of standards it’s possible to try to hold oneself to, which is a set you will mostly feel on-board with or at worst conflicted about—
(Like, when you try to hold yourself to a standard you either think it’s good/correct to do so or at least a part of you thinks it’s good/correct to do so)
—versus the set of standards you could try to hold someone else to, which contains a lot of stuff that they might reject or disagree with or think stupid, etc.
The kinds of conflict that can emerge, internally, from trying to hold myself to some standard are very very different from the kinds of conflict that can emerge, interpersonally, from trying to hold someone else to some standard. The former has way fewer ways in which it can go explosively wrong in the broader social web.
FWIW, it’s not at all clear to me, before really thinking about, what the difference is between “holding oneself to a standard” and “holding someone else to a standard”. Here’s what happens when I try to guess at what the differences might be.
1) Maybe it has something to do with the points at which intervention is feasible. When holding yourself to a standard, you can intervene in your own mind before taking action, and you can also attempt to course-correct in the middle of acting. When holding someone else to a standard, you can only intervene after you have observed the action.
2) Like 1, except since you can also intervene after observing the action when holding yourself to a standard as well, “holding yourself to a standard” is an umbrella covering a wider range of thingies than “holding someone else to a standard”, but some of the thingies it covers are the same.
3) Perhaps the difference is a matter of degree, for some reason? Like perhaps there is something about holding other people to standards that makes the highest standard you can reasonably hold someone to much lower than the highest standard you can reasonably hold yourself to, or (less plausibly?) vise versa.
Of these, 2 certainly seems the closest to matching my observations of the world in general; but it does not help me make sense of Duncan’s words as much as 1 does.
There’s also a huge distinction between the set of standards it’s possible to try to hold oneself to, which is a set you will mostly feel on-board with or at worst conflicted about—
(Like, when you try to hold yourself to a standard you either think it’s good/correct to do so or at least a part of you thinks it’s good/correct to do so)
—versus the set of standards you could try to hold someone else to, which contains a lot of stuff that they might reject or disagree with or think stupid, etc.
The kinds of conflict that can emerge, internally, from trying to hold myself to some standard are very very different from the kinds of conflict that can emerge, interpersonally, from trying to hold someone else to some standard. The former has way fewer ways in which it can go explosively wrong in the broader social web.